Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Laura makes it through surgery!

Dr. B finally called around 4:00 pm. She made it through her surgery!

One of Dr. B's vet techs has a Rottweiler who donated the blood for her transfusion. She got real fresh blood -- it literally went out of the Rottweiler and immediately into Laura. This certainly saved her life. The surgery was a bit more complicated. As expected, her stomach was full of blood and the tumor on her spleen was ruptured. Dr. B was able to remove the tumor and her spleen. Despite her age, Dr. B said she was a real fighter and he was amazed at how well she did through the surgery. I guess Laura knew that it wasn't her time to go.

There were no tumors on her liver or other organs that Dr. B could see. That was good news, I guess. I was told I could come visit her after work.

Laura right after her Spleenectomy

When I arrived, I went back to the hospital ward and opened her cage. Laura just looked up at me and wagged her tail a bit. She didn't feel like getting out of the kennel which was fine with me. I just petted her for about 20 minutes and told her how much I loved her. I knew this wasn't the end yet.

Dr. B came back and we chatted for awhile. I had already done tons of research on the internet and knew that this was probably Hemangiosarcoma. He told me not to jump to conclusions until we got the pathology report back from the lab. I work in statistics so I always like to know what the chances are, what the odds are. He agreed that in cases like this it's usually hemangiosarcoma in about 75% of all cases. Hemangiosarcoma is an aggressive, quick and terminal type of blood cancer in dogs. Most don't even make it a few months after diagnosis. Complete devastation is all I could feel.

I gave Laura a kiss and told her I would be back to visit her again tomorrow. I wish I could have stayed the night and slept on the floor with her.